Magnificat

by Julian May

  “No. Only dying of thirst, filthy … and unaccountably horny.”

  Her laugh was light and nervous. “I have some Veuve Clicquot waiting for us in the bedroom. Back on the Old World, it’s almost midnight on New Year’s Eve in the San Juan Islands. I thought we could have two celebrations at once.”

  “Mmm. New Year, 2083. I’d completely forgotten.” His thoughts were still on the metaconcert exercise and he shook his head abstractedly, allowing her to lead him toward their rooms. The main corridor of the house with its tall ceiling and massive planter-urns was dimly lit, silent and full of shadows.

  “I’m glad we’re alone here tonight,” he said.

  “I thought it would be for the best … not knowing how the Cible exercise would work out.”

  She opened the door to their bathroom. It simulated a natural grotto with three shallow terraces, carved from lustrous olivine shot through with rich veins of milky quartz and gold. At the top were dressing rooms and toilet cubicles, luxuriously appointed. Carved cabinets and shelves of precious woods held cosmetics, perfumes, thick towels on warming bars, machines for hair-styling, manicure, pedicure, and massage. A new Armani-Vestiarista Moduplex stood ready to dispense underwear and casual clothing on command. It would also polish footgear and freshen up more substantial garments in its dry-cleaning armoire.

  On the level below was the sunken spa, carved from a single block of jadeite three meters in diameter. It was fed by a steaming cascade that splashed down a tumbled course of backlit amethyst boulders. Beside the tub, exotic foliage plants and vines with pendant golden flowers framed an open shower niche with multiple sprayheads where shampoos, body emollients, and shave-lotions could be programmed vocally.

  At the lowest level was a great swimming pool banked with full-grown trees and ornamental shrubbery. Half of its 30-meter length was indoors and the rest, divided above and underwater by a tall slab of one-way, matter-impermeate glass, extended into the gardens outside.

  Marc strode to the refreshment bar, called for a liter of orange juice, and tossed it down his throat. “God! That’s better.”

  He stripped off his clothing, nudged the soiled garments into the floor hopper with his PK, stepped into the shower, and nearly disappeared in a froth of cleansing bubbles.

  When he emerged he said to Cyndia, “Join me in the tub?”

  But she shook her head. “I’ll sit here with you while you soak.” She pulled up a brass bench with a green repelvel cushion.

  He submerged completely in the steaming water, then came up, activated the Jacuzzi jets, and relaxed with a sigh of contentment, closing his eyes.

  “Was it very difficult?” she asked.

  “The hardest thing I’ve ever attempted. I feel as though I’ve been stomped by a herd of buffalo—inside and outside.”

  She got up, fetched a large glass of steaming amber liquid from the bar, and put it into his hand. “It’s a bullshot, spiked with vitamins. If you won’t eat, at least have that.”

  He shrugged and sipped the alcoholic broth slowly, letting the swirling water and his own self-redaction soothe away the worst of the nervous tension.

  She waited in silence as he seemed to doze. Then: “May I see what happened to the satellite?”

  “If you like.” He sent a compact précis of the event into her waiting mind, not noticing when she uttered a low cry of dismay. “The exercise worked well enough, but Alex says that no amount of fine-tuning the revised program will give this configuration more efficiency than what we achieved today. I’ll have to do an entirely new design.”

  “The energy output seemed … devastating enough to me.”

  “With Mental Man, we would have had far more flexibility. Only five starships would have been needed in the operation instead of a hundred and fifty-six. And we could have split the metaconcert energies—even utilized more than one focus if we’d wanted to. Blown Cible to smithereens in a tenth of the time by negating its gravity rather than simply tinkering with its material core. Without paramount minds in the generator we’re effectively limited to the more elementary modes of creative metamorphosis. However, a new design will enable us to up the gross energy output another twenty or thirty percent by plugging in a few hundred more 600X operators who are still in training, plus an auxiliary superstructure of E18 helmet ops. But the gain will be partially offset by decreased legerity in the executive focus.”

  “I’m sorry,” she confessed. “I don’t understand.”

  He sighed, opened his eyes, and climbed out of the tub. “We’ll be stronger, but slower and clumsier.” He showed her another image as he descended to the big swimming pool and dove in.

  Stroking underwater, he said: Originally, I had hoped we’d be able to conduct decisive hit-and-run operations, popping in and out of hyperspace without the Milieu being able to nail us. But if the concert takes longer to set up and execute, we’ll have to pick our strategic objectives very carefully and also take steps to defend the fleet of starships carrying the CE operators during the action. To this end, I’ve ordered the Astrakhanian ships to take on full crews and proceed to a hyperspatial rendezvous consonant with Molakar support.”

  “Molakar?” Her face fell in dismay. “I thought …”

  He said: Cordelia and her staff of analysts are running a new set of simulations. They should be ready in time for the Concilium session so we’ll know exactly what our options are. But the likeliest now is the Molakar demonstration.

  “The Milieu might still capitulate peacefully to your ultimatum.” She had come down to poolside with a robe of white terrycloth for him.

  He climbed out, pressing the water from his thick curling hair with one big hand, and put on the robe. “I doubt that the exotic magnates would succumb to my coercive wiles this time, darling. They’d think I was bluffing. It seems inconceivable to the exotics—especially to the damned Lylmik!—that a human leader with paramount mindpowers would attempt anything but an intellectual solution to a grievance. They’ve never understood human nature. Our craven acceptance of the Simbiari Proctorship lulled the Milieu into thinking that we’d accept despotism if the trade-off was peace in a galactic civilization. They can’t believe we’d be willing to risk losing that. The only way we can convince them otherwise is to demonstrate a willingness to destroy them unless they agree to let us go.”

  “Molakar,” she whispered. “Ah, Marcas, Marcas! You’ve intended it all along.”

  “It was always the most effective option.” He started up the steps to the dressing room.

  “You might consider one other,” she said very softly, following after. “Try appealing to Davy MacGregor when he assumes the position of First Magnate at the Concilium session.”

  Marc frowned. He toweled his hair damp-dry, then stuck his head momentarily into the styler. “Just what are you suggesting?”

  “Davy isn’t as stiff-necked as your father was. His own longstanding doubts about Unity are well publicized, and his years as Earth Dirigent have given him a more tolerant mindset. If you could make him understand how determined and well armed the Rebellion has become—if Davy realized just how close to the brink of war the galaxy is—he might try to broker a compromise. Especially since there’s no longer any danger of Fury or the Hydra tainting the Rebellion with their own secret agenda. The controversy is a purely moral one now: a question of human liberty versus the intractable position of the Milieu on Unity. Perhaps a mutual concession is possible! Paul would never even consider it. Davy might.”

  “I doubt it.” He went to the Moduplex and ordered up a pair of black silk pajamas.

  “Marcas a mhuirnín, dearest love, if there’s any chance of avoiding violence—of sparing the lives of all those Krondaku on Molakar—you must make the try!”

  His retort was icy. “It’s my decision to make.”

  “Of course.” She turned away, her vision blurring with tears.

  He caught her arm. “Cyndia. It’s necessary. Regrettable, but necessary. We really have
only the single chance to shock the Milieu out of its self-righteous complacency—to prove that we’re in deadly earnest and compel their surrender to our demands. Blowing up an uninhabited planetoid like Cible wouldn’t have the same impact at all. We’d tip our hand uselessly, lose the psychological advantage. It would be different if we could have destroyed a sun with mindpower …”

  She faced him, composed again. “Might Mental Man have accomplished that?”

  “Perhaps. If there had been time for the children to mature. But my first choice for the demonstration has always been Molakar. The enforcers’ world. The Milieu’s base for the sequestration of Earth. Do you know how many Krondak starships are gathered there now?”

  She shook her head.

  “Nearly four thousand. I’ve seen them myself through far-sensory CE. And more of them arrive every day from remote sectors of the galaxy—a concentration of high-df vessels that hasn’t been seen since the Great Intervention seventy years ago.”

  “Dia linn! Then the Milieu must suspect us.”

  “They’d be imbeciles if they didn’t. But they’ve done nothing to stop us yet. I admit I don’t know what to make of it.”

  “Talk to Davy MacGregor,” she begged, taking both his hands in hers. “At least ask him if he’ll try for a compromise. Promise me that much, mo mhuirnin dílis. Please!”

  The powerful fingers tightened. Then he freed her with a small sigh. A peculiarly sweet smile lifted one side of his mouth. “Let’s go to bed. I want to make love to you more than anything in the world.”

  “You will do it!” she cried joyously, and flung her arms about his neck. “Thank you, Marcas. Thank you.”

  He picked her up and carried her to the bedroom.

  He had never asked her if she knew about their consanguinity.

  At first, immediately after he’d dealt with Madeleine, he had feared that personal inhibition would taint their marital relations; but his desire for Cyndia remained as strong as ever. He had looked briefly into psychology and anthropology reference works, not trusting his own instinct, and discovered that the taboo was a social artifact, largely enforced by childhood conditioning. Sex with Madeleine had been repugnant and unthinkable because she was truly his sister. Cyndia—whatever her biological heritage—was simply not.

  Their first coupling on the Earth New Year of 2083 was fierce and needful. He never surrendered, not even at the climax, and so she waited. The device was hidden deep within her pelvic cavity, harmless unless she deliberately activated its sophisticated mental switch. She had bench-tested it extensively, but there had been no way to insure its proper functioning at the kairotic moment. Only one thing was certain: He would feel no pain.

  If she used it.

  If there was no other choice.

  They lay naked, side by side, drinking champagne, letting the erotic tension rebuild before beginning again. The bedroom was lit by sconces of candles, open to scented light air from the gardens. Fire-moths blinked and sang softly in the ornamental shrubbery. Tiny seismic tremors, the sort that longtime citizens of Okanagon never even noticed, vibrated a sculpture on the patio outside and caused it to tinkle faintly.

  “There’s something I must ask you,” she said. “About Mental Man.”

  “What is it?”

  “I was surprised when you didn’t reinitiate the project immediately after the disaster. So were Jeff and the Keoghs, especially since you said you intended to do so. Of course you revised the offensive metaconcert so that it would work with adult CE operators—but as you told me, the new configuration is much less efficient. Have you decided to abandon the Mental Man project after all?”

  His mindscreen tightened. “The time factor is against us now. Still, if the Rebellion should be prolonged, a new generation of young paramounts might still be an important strategic asset But I’ve been faced with a significant moral dilemma in connection with starting over. It’s still unresolved.”

  “A … moral dilemma?” A sunburst of hope dazed her. Was it possible that he had actually reconsidered the hideous encephalization procedure that deprived the babies of their bodies? Did he finally realize what she had known for so long, that it was intrinsically evil to attempt the acceleration of human mental and bodily evolution, to engender Homo summus while fully incarnate Homo sapiens and Homo superior still lived?

  Was it possible for her to spare him after all?

  He lay on his back with one arm folded behind his head and the other holding her tenderly. The flickering candlelight danced on the clean planes of his face. He was so serene, so powerful, so very beautiful. Her favorite endearment for him in the Irish was ardaingeal ionúin—“beloved archangel”—a deliberate defiance of the dreadful nickname the loyalists had pinned on him.

  She said, “Tell me about your problem, grá mo chroí. Perhaps I can help.”

  “After Mental Man died, I discovered that the ova used to conceive the children weren’t those of my cousin Rosamund, as we’d all thought. They belonged to the Hydra. Madeleine. My sister.”

  Cyndia was deathly silent, willing hope not to die, guarding her own fearful thoughts.

  “Maddy admitted it to me,” Marc said. “She also admitted that she’d turned Mental Man into a new, hundred-headed Hydra.”

  “That’s … appalling. Then the death of the babies was a miraculous escape for all of us!”

  “So it would seem.” His voice was grim. “I killed Maddy. It was both premeditated and just. All of the Hydras had been condemned in absentia by the First Magnate because of their earlier crimes, and there seemed no good reason for me to hand her over to the authorities. It would have tainted Mental Man beyond redemption in the public eye.”

  “And you couldn’t risk that,” Cyndia whispered.

  “I destroyed Maddy’s cerebrum but her body is still in cryogenic storage at CEREM. With a single ovary intact. The body is vegetative, but Jeff Steinbrenner is confident that regen-tank technology could replicate the germ plasm if we use external redactive input to augment the residue in the cerebellar network and the nervous system of the living body.”

  “So your great moral dilemma involves whether or not to use your Hydra sister’s ova … not any intrinsic doubts about the project itself.”

  He seemed not to hear her. Still holding her close to him, he said, “Cyndia, I despise and abominate Madeleine. I hope she burns in hell when I finally let her die. The thought that that monster should be the in-vitro mother of Mental Man, even posthumously … is unbearable.”

  “And yet you saved her body.”

  “Out of sheer desperation,” he admitted. “There is another way to engender Mental Man but I was afraid to tell you—afraid it might drive you away from me.”

  “Ah, m’ aingeal. My poor, poor angel! So you do know!” She drew away slightly so that their eyes could meet, and spoke firmly. “And so do I. I know who my true father is.”

  “Cyndia—” His voice broke and his gaze fell.

  “My father’s name is Rory Muldowney. The biological accident between Paul Remillard and my mother was just that. It can make no difference between us, my love—neither to me nor to God in heaven, who sees love and not procreative technicalities. And if you wish me to be the mother of nonborn Mental Man, I’ll do it.”

  His face lit in impassioned relief and both of his arms tightened about her. “You will! Chérie, how could I have doubted you?”

  She held her breath, hardly daring to believe her deliverance. But then he said:

  “Our Mental offspring will still have a serious latency factor, but that can be overcome by encephalization. Steinbrenner is certain of it. Even then, we can’t be certain that every conceptus of ours will be paramount. But the geneticists assure me that there won’t be a problem in the second generation.”

  Her calmness did not waver as the truth pierced her heart and hope perished. “You—you mean with Hagen and Cloud.”

  “Of course. Their in-vitro offspring will all be operant paramounts.”
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  Of course … That’s what he’d meant all along. If she had turned him down, and he couldn’t bring himself to accept Madeleine as the mother, there were always their own true babies to be the parents of Mental Man.

  Marc went on: “And afterward, when we’ve won the Rebellion and nothing stands in the way of Mental Man’s triumph, Cloud and Hagen will still be young enough to achieve their own full mental potential, just as my brother did.”

  “Your brother …”

  “I tried to explain it to him. To Jack, that is. I thought he’d see the beauty of it—the rightness. But he’s a blind fool. Selfish. Locked into his own limited vision of Unified humanity. Not like you, my darling.”

  Hagen and Cloud would achieve their mental potential. He’d said it.

  He kissed her closed eyelids, then her lips. She felt his arousal and knew that the time had come.

  “Love me,” Cyndia said, making the decision for herself and for Mental Man and Mental Woman. “I love you so very much.” Her PK snuffed out the bedroom candles.

  In time, he would recover. Her love would help.

  She felt her body levitating with his, floating and turning in the warm air. He kissed her mouth, her throat, her breasts, would have continued if she had not taken hold of him and guided him into her, kindling her first orgasm. She cried out, clinging to him, laving and caressing him internally, wrapping him in vital energies wrung from the profound depths of her body and soul. She would have flamed again but she turned the neural energies back to him, magnified by love.

  If it went as she hoped, he might never know it had happened. By the time the war was won (of course he would win!), she would have found a way to destroy Madeleine’s body, to arrange for her own sterilization and that of the children. Marc’s sister Marie would also take the appropriate steps once the necessity was explained to her. Then, even if Marc regained his fertility in the regen-tank, the nightmare of Mental Man would be over.

  He caught fire and she heard his preorgasmic cry as he was carried helplessly forward to the culmination. Yes—this time he would relinquish himself in mutuality. Their bodies merged fully, joyously, paired on the summit, engulfed in a shared flood of stellar blue-white.